Guilds and Civil Society in European Political Thought from the Twelfth Century to the Present 0801416906

Citation preview

GUILDS AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL THOUGHT FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT

GUILDS AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL THOUGHT FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT ANTONY BLACK

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA, NEW YORK

(£) 1984 Antony Black

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address Cornell University Press, 124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1984 by Cornell University Press International Standard Book Number 0-8014-1690-6 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 83-72879 Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge

TO SARAH, MY WIFE

CONTENTS

PREFACE

PART I

xi

FROM 1050 TO THE REFORMATION

1

1 THE GUILD: HISTORY 3 Role of guilds in Europe - general guilds (p.4) - craft-guilds (p.6) - modern assessments (p.10) 2 THE GUILD: ETHOS AND DOCTRINE 12 Craft-guild ethos: solidarity, honour of craft, justice - juristic opinion (p. 16) — corporate legitimacy: Germanic and Roman views (p.18) — legitimation ‘by the law’ (p.19) — Innocent IV on legitimation by group will (p.21) - procedural values (p.23) - legislative competence (p.25) - Gierke’s and Durkheim’s views considered (p.26) possible reasons why theorists largely ignored guilds (p.29) 3 CIVIL society 32 Definition - economic development (p.33) - freedom of person (p.34) - security of ownership (p.34) — privacy, commerce, contract (p.36) - civil society and towns (p.38) - legal equality (p.40) - Cicero and St Paul (p.41) - liberty as a European value (p.42) 4 THE ETHOS OF THE EARLY TOWNS (COMMUNES) UP TO 1250 44 The medieval communes - range of governmental activity (p.45) - constitutions: assembly, ruler and ‘judges’; councils (p.47) - perceptions of the urban community: universitas (p.49) - procedural values: counsel, consent, election (p.53) - question of origins: (i) Roman (p.53) - (ii) Germanic (p.55) - town and guild: oath, friendship (p.56) - the politicization of the guild (p.58) - (iii) Christianity (p.59) - mixture of these three (p.61) - Investiture Controversy as sparking-plug: secularization (p.62) 5 GUILD POLITIES AND URBAN IDEOLOGY, 1250-1550 66 The political rise of the crafts - new and varied civic regimes (p.68) - urban values in later Middle Ages: community, ‘rich and poor’, friendship (p.68) - peace and common good (p.70) - conceptualization of the political role of guilds (p.71) - lack of corporatist ideology (p.72) - liberty and equality (p.73) 6 GUILD AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN MEDIEVAL POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 76 The idea of civitas: Thomas Aquinas - values of friendship and mutual aid: division of labour (p.77) - values of civil society: personal liberty, rule of law (p.79) - law, not groups, as focus of moral values (p.81) - philosophers and jurists on guild rule and popular government: (i) democratic! (p.82) - Albert on political equality (p.83) Bartolus (p.83) - (ii) government by the community (p.83) - participatory consent (p.84) _ the small group as model: Salamonio on contractual societas (P-84)

vii

GUILDS AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL THOUGHT 7 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA: A PHILOSOPHY OF THE CORPORATE STATE 86 Marsiglio’s uniqueness - purpose of his work (p.87) - civitas and civil life (p.88) functional ‘parts’ of the city (p.88) - natural division of labour (p.89) - state as corporation (p.89) - communal sovereignty (p.90) - ideology of commune as philosophical truth (p.92) - old and new classes in sovereign legislature (p.92) interweaving of guild and civil society: mutual aid and exchange (p.93) - lack of influence on urban politics (p.95) 8 THE ITALIAN HUMANISTS: CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE REPUBLIC 96 The humanists as innovators - little on guilds: Patrizi on friendship (p.97) - values of civil society: liberty and equality (p.98) - Bruni on civic values and popular government (p.98) — equality of opportunity (p.101) - Machiavelli on equality (p.103) — civil society separable from city-state (p.105) — Machiavelli on participa¬ tion and virtu vis-a-vis communal tradition (p.106) - from corporation to state (p.108)

9 GUILD AND CITY IN THE GERMAN REFORMATION 110 Manual work and equality of callings - adoption of Reformation in cities: role of artisans (p.lll) - Reformation and communal tradition (p.112) - political and social reforms (p.112) — community and friendship (p.113) - covenant (p.113) Jager as guild ideologist (p.114) — German humanism and the city-state (p.115) Jager on guild rule (p.116)

PART II

FROM THE REFORMATION TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 121

10 GUILDS AND POLITICAL CULTURE 123 Early modern guilds — in Germany (p.123) - journeymen’s organizations (p.125) — guild ideas in the English Revolution (p.126) - in Germany (p.128) 11 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE GUILD: BODIN AND ALTHUSIUS 129 Bodin on ‘colleges’ - affective groups (p.130) - friendship (p.130) - colleges and state (p.131) — Althusius on association (consociatio) (p.131) - solidarity and exchange (p.133) - communicatio and mutual aid: division of labour (p.134) - in city and kingdom: commerce (p.134) - the college as self-authorizing (p.137) college and polity (p. 137) — community and contract in Althusius’ political thought (p.139) - Christian influence (p.140) - Althusius as corporatist (p.141) 12 CITY, CORPORATION AND NATION 143 Early modern cities - guild towns in Germany (p.144) - city and state: federalism (p.145) - German theory: Justus Moser (p.146) - nation-state modelled (i) on citystate (p.146) - Rousseau an exception (p.147) - (ii) on corporation: Gierke and Pocock (p.149) - free association and social contract (p.150) - Locke and corporation theory (p. 151) 13 CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE STATE 153 ‘Possessive market society’ - labour as a commodity (p.155) - contractual thought: oath and covenant (p.155) - Hobbes (p.156) - free trade in Britain: Adam Smith (p.159) - in Germany: Justi (p.161) - personal independence: Rousseau (p.161) ‘the equality of conditions’ (p.162)

viii

CONTENTS PART III

FROM THE FRENCH REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT

14 GUILDS AND TRADE UNIONS: THE ETHOS OF MUTUAL AID

165

167

Survival of guilds in Germany - the guilds and 1848 (p.168) - brotherhoods in Europe (p.170) — early trade unions (p.171) — question of continuity between guilds and unions, especially in Britain (p.172) — in organization (p.175) — in moral ethos (p.176) — solidarite (p.177) — mutuality in Proudhon, Herzen, Kropotkin (p.179) 15 THE IDEAL OF CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 182 Co-operatives in recent times — artisan ideology (p.184) — theories of co-operative production (p.185) - J. S. Mill (p.187) - Proudhon (p.187) - Marx (p.188) - the political commune at Paris, 1871 (p.189) - participation (p.192) - voluntary associations (p.193) 16 THE ROMANTIC PHILOSOPHY OF COMMUNITY 196 The German problem — philosophical changes (p.198) — freedom in community: Eichhorn (p.198) - nation as community (Volksgemeinschaft) (p.199) - wholeness (p.199) - economic ethics (p.200) 17 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CORPORATION: HEGEL 202 Hegel’s political philosophy — his notion of ‘civil society’: free division of labour (p.203) - the moral role of corporations (p.203) - their social, economic, legal functions (p.205) - corporations and the state (p.206) 18 FELLOWSHIP AND COMMUNITY: GIERKE AND TONNIES 210 Gierke on the Fellowship with a real personality - on the medieval guild (p.211) - on modern producers’ co-operatives (p.213) - Gierke and Marx (p.215) - Fellowship and nation-state (p.215) - Tonnies on Community and Association (p.217) - guild themes in Tonnies (p.218) 19 DURKHEIM AND MODERN CORPORATISM 220 Corporations in modern political thought, as solution to industrial problems - as a genuine moral community (p.221) - functional representation in parliament (p.223) - Durkheim on morality and society (p.223) - ‘organic solidarity’ (p.225) - moral aspects of division of labour (p.225) — occupational groups as the agencies of professional ethics (p.227) — their specific functions (p.230) — Durkheim’s place in the history of corporatist thought (p.231) - his relevance for today (p.232) - ‘liberal corporatism’ in recent practice (p.233) - lack of recent corporatist theory: dominance of liberal values (p.234) conclusion

237

APPENDIX: A NOTE ON METHOD 242 The history of ideas: paradigm, context - myth of coherence (p.243) — how can we know what people thought? (p.244) — causal role of ideas (p.245) - ethos, ideology, philosophy (p.246) — society and moral language (p.249) bibliography 252 Primary sources (p.252) - Secondary sources (p.258) name index SUBJECT INDEX

IX

273 276

.. s '

PREFACE

This book is a history of the idea of the corporate organization of labour and of its relation to theories of government and state, both in everyday ethos and in social philosophy. Put another way, it is a history of medieval and modern political thought from the viewpoint of the guild and of values which have been associated with it. It is intended for both the general and the specialist reader, for the student as well as the scholar. I have attempted to break new ground comprehensibly, and to state the wider implications of my findings. I embarked on this research with the intention of recovering an older, atavistic notion of community, of pretentiously endorsing its legitimacy by proving its antiquity, and of reintroducing the modern reader to the affective language of Europe’s communal heritage. The notion of tightlyknit, affective community is notoriously alluring to modern western man; we tend to associate it with an ideal past, and to see in its restoration a focus for our hopes for a better society. It is an ideal which both socialists and liberals can, in their own ways, espouse. Great scholars like Gierke and Michaud-Quantin seemed to point the way. But the spirits of Karl Popper and Quentin Skinner stood impishly at my elbow. The facts of cultural and intellectual history moved at a tangent to the myth that liberal individualism has steadily replaced a strong sense of community. The diverse themes of the present book are the result. In order to bring the complex data into some kind of focus — and doubtless due to my own predilection — I isolated the guild as a species of community (the community of labour) which would serve as a more precise theme. To describe other forms of community, in particular village and town, would have required other volumes. Yet the guild seems also peculiarly appropriate because in a precise way it harnessed certain communal values — brotherhood, friendship and mutual aid — and because it has been such a distinctive feature of European social and economic organization. Meanwhile, I was quickly impressed by the early diffusion of liberal ideas about person and property (which I have called, for reasons of neutrality, the values of ‘civil society’). These serve as a foil to guild ideas; more important, only by considering both sets of beliefs together can one estimate the relative historical importance of either. xi

GUILDS AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL THOUGHT

I have attempted, therefore, to explore the ethos, ideology and philosophy of European groups and polities from the angle of ‘Guilds and Civil Society’. The results are not easily summarized. (For example, differences between popular and learned thought constantly emerged.) I have examined the views held about guilds both by their members and by jurists and philosophers (chs 1-2, 10-11), and I have attempted to do the same for their nearest modern equivalents — trade unions and corporations (chs 14, 19). But right from the twelfth century I have set this against the con¬ trapuntal values of free market and bourgeois liberalism (ch.3). Secondly, I have tried to see how far one could use both guild and civil society as explanatory models for understanding the genesis of European political ideas: that is, how far ideas about political communities either sprang from or replicated these values. The connection between guild and polity was especially pronounced in the medieval cities; here I have dealt first with the ordinary mentality of townsmen (chs 4-5). Proceeding next to medieval political philosophy, the connection is more tenuous there, with greater emphasis upon the values of civil society (ch.6), but Marsiglio welded the two themes together in a novel and extraordinary way (ch.7). Civil society made triumphal progress during the Renaissance (ch.8); the values of guild and commune renewed their strength in the Reformation (ch.9). After examining early modern guilds and the eventual emergence of a true philosophy of guilds in Bodin and Althusius (chs 10—11), we find that the foundations of modern political theory are illuminated by isolating the two strands of guild and civil society — each of which straddled the economy as well as the polity. State and nation were conceptualized not only, as Pocock and Skinner have rightly emphasized, in terms of classical humanism, but also in terms of corporate, sometimes explicitly guild, values, and — to extend C. B. Macpherson’s argument — in terms of the values of market exchange, which, however, seem to bind together as well as to differentiate participants (chs 12—13). Guild values of brotherhood, and the corporate protection of producers, were taken up in the nineteenth century principally by the early trade unions (ch.14), and by advocates of ‘co-operation’ or co-operative socialism (ch.15). The most dramatic development of guild ideals, however, was that undertaken by the Romantics, and then by Hegel, Gierke and Tonnies. As liberal values dominated Anglo-Saxon political thought, so communal ones shaped the perception of association, corporation and nation-state in Germany (chs 16—18). The most articulate exposition ever undertaken of the community of labour was in the modern corporatist movement (itself considerably stimulated by the Romantic movement and Hegel); Durkheim, the most outstanding exponent of the moral community of labour in this school, gave it a quasi-scientific basis in sociology (ch.19). While this book aims at being comprehensive, it has clearly not been xii

PREFACE

possible to cover every relevant author or movement. It is hoped, none the less, that what is said here may offer some hints, and perhaps a framework, within which such omissions might be made good. It seemed best to leave methodology to the Appendix, in the belief that people prefer to sample the pudding before reading the recipe. A few remarks must, however, be made at the outset. Objectivity is notoriously difficult to acquire in the study of the history of ideas. The subject of the present book is laden with moral overtones; few if any of the sources studied were morally or politically uncommitted. But I have attempted to be objective and empirical in assessing evidence, describing viewpoints and drawing conclusions. It was through testing contrary hypotheses that the twin emphases of this work emerged. I have been sufficiently excited by the beauty of the sources positively to enjoy the shock of discovering that the truth was unpredictable. It is difficult to study any great thinker without falling under the spell of his writings; but I dare to hope that even here I have been impartial, if that is possible, in my affections. I reserve the right, nevertheless, at the end to draw a moral out of the story, distinct from the story itself. The reader will be inclined to draw his or her own moral anyway, and it is perhaps as well that they should know mine, and that I should state explicitly what I have almost certainly implied occasionally by tone of voice. Weber was right that one cannot exclude a kind of moral judgment from one’s choice of theme: in the human sciences scholars will choose topics they find ‘culturally significant’. Nor can one alter the tone of one’s voice. The best way is presumably to try sincerely to appreciate different viewpoints. It seemed reasonable, and for heuristic and descriptive purposes necess¬ ary, to distinguish between ethos (the spontaneous convictions of everyday life), ideology (the ad hoc presentation of a case — political advocacy), and philosophy (the systematic, rational examination of political norms): clearly, there are many overlaps (see Appendix). In this whole area, the traditional distinction between medieval and modern is inadequate. I have preferred to divide this study chronologically at the time when the Reformation was more or less firmly established, about 1550, and again at the French Revolution, which had such a decisive impact upon political thought in almost every European country except Britain. This book is confined to Europe. In the first section, I have tended to concentrate upon Germany (occasionally referred to as Germania, to emphasize its geographical and linguistic boundaries), Italy and the Low Countries, because it was there that the guilds were most prominent in city politics, and that the cities themselves achieved most independence. England joins the centre of the stage with the Levellers and the early trade unions. Anyone studying the history of political ideas today is indebted to the pioneering work of Otto Gierke, and to the recent advances in method made xiii

GUILDS AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL THOUGHT

by John Pocock and Quentin Skinner. (I would like to think this book does something to align the perspectives of Gierke and Pocock.) The model of ‘guild’ is (so far as I am aware) largely my own, though naturally refined in the course of research; that of ‘civil society’ was partly suggested, or pinpointed, by Michael Oakeshott’s societas {On Human Conduct, ch.3). These two concepts were developed independently of Tonnies’s Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, most of this book being written before I actually read Tonnies. My own interest in this subject was first inspired by Professor Walter Ullmann, a great man and an amazing teacher. In writing this book, I am indebted, first of all, to Professor James Cameron, who encouraged me in a moment of disillusionment. I am grateful to Professor Michael Wilks for supporting the project as first conceived; and to Dr Joe Canning for showing me round the medieval jurists and their sources. I would like most deeply to thank the following for reading sections in draft: Professor John Mundy and Peter King (chs 1—5), Dr Janet Coleman (ch.3), Dr Joe Canning and Professor Peter Stein (parts of chs 2, 4, 6), Professor David Luscombe (parts of chs 4, 6, 7), Professor Quentin Skinner (chs 5, 8), Dr Harro Hopfl (chs 9— 11), Dr Richard Tuck (chs 10-13), Iain Hampsher-Monk (chs 12-13), Dr William Walker and Dr Chris Whatley (ch.14), Professor Hans Reiss (chs 16-18), Basil O’Neill (chs 16-17) and Professor Neil Cooper (Appendix). Their comments have been enormously helpful, although I have not been able to meet them all and enough of my own mistakes remain. Peter King kindly referred me to the Christburg Peace document; Professor Brandmuller and Dr Blendinger of Ausgburg kindly told me about secondary works on Jager. I am indebted to many others who have given advice and encourage¬ ment, especially frequenters of the annual political thought conference at Oxford, including Steven Lukes, Michael Hawkins, Mike Levin, John Gibbins, David Edwards and Ursula Vogel. These and others have given ample proof of the ‘fellowship of the craft’. I am most grateful to Janice Price, of Methuen, for her continued interest in this project, and for her help and advice on publishing matters. I would like to thank Professor Ken Newton for his unfailing support and kindness as head of the department in which I teach. For enabling me to track down and get access to books, I would like to thank the University Libraries of Dundee, St Andrews, Cambridge and Edinburgh, in particular the inter-library loans section at Dundee and Mr Hargreaves of the rare books section at St Andrews; and also the Cambridge college libraries of Trinity, Caius and St John’s, especially Mr Kaye of Trinity, and Edinburgh University Law Library. I am grateful to the Nuffield Foundation for giving me a research fellowship for one year — enabling me to forage more widely and to compose without distractions — and to the British Academy for a grant which allowed me to do research in Cambridge. I would also like to thank the University of xiv

PREFACE

Dundee, and the Department of Political Science, for giving me two separate sabbatical terms; and the Faculty of Arts and Social Science for funding my photocopying expenses. Nor should I omit the architect and building craftsmen who constructed my garden study, a short distance from the house, close yet independent. It is difficult to know how to thank my wife, Sarah, for all she has done to make it possible and even thinkable for me to undertake and write this book. She has given me the freedom to think which only love can provide, and it is to her that the book is dedicated. My children, too, Stephen, Thomas, Esther and Mathew, have had to put up with a lot because of this book; the constant particularity of their needs has saved me from many an idle generalization. I have used the Harvard (author-date) system of reference for all secondary works (i.e. all works of historical scholarship); primary works (i.e. original sources, including modern editions, and theoretical or philo¬ sophical texts of all periods) are referred to by title (and author, if this is not obvious from the context). ‘Cit. Bloggs ...’ refers to a primary source quoted in a secondary work by Bloggs. I have listed medieval and Renaissance authors by their second names, except when there is a strong contrary convention.

xv

.

.

PART I

FROM 1050 TO THE REFORMATION

In the first part, we shall consider the development of guilds in general and of craft-guilds in particular (ch.l), and the ethos enshrined in them, together with learned writings about them, which are virtually confined to the great medieval jurists (ch.2). Then we shall consider the emergence of an opposite set of values focused upon personal liberty and market exchange (ch.3). From then on, we shall be chiefly concerned with ideas about political institutions and structures in so far as these appear to reflect the influence of one or the other of these patterns of thought. This will take us, first, to the early urban communes, to the development of civic life and some kind of civic culture in Europe (ch.4); then to the craft ‘revolutions’ of the later Middle Ages, and the ideology of the more developed cities and city-states (ch.5). Secondly, it takes us into scholastic and juristic ideas about civic communities and, to a limited extent, states in general (ch.6): Marsiglio emerges here as a unique example of a kind of ‘corporatist’ philosophy in the medieval world (ch.7). In the Renaissance, Bruni applied the ideas of civil society to the state and Machiavelli replaced communal concepts with republi¬ can virtu (ch.8). The Reformation reawoke communal stirrings in Germany and produced the first articulation of the guild-town ethos (ch.9).

1 THE GUILD: HISTORY

To most of us today the term ‘guild’ suggests either a professional organization (the Writers’ Guild, for example), or the craft-guilds of medieval Europe. But guild in the Germanic languages (more often, in this context, spelled gild ) originally meant ‘fraternities of young warriors practising the cult of heroes’ (Le Bras 1940—1, 316n.), and then any group bound together by ties of rite and friendship, offering mutual support to its members upon payment of their entry fee (geld). In its first known use, some time before AD 450, the word gilda signified a sacrificial meal. This was accompanied by religious libation and the cult of the dead. The sacred banquet, signifying social solidarity, was, and remained throughout medi¬ eval times, ‘an essential mark of all guilds’ (Coornaert 1947, 31; Wilda 1831, 29ff.), which were sometimes actually known as convivia. Although de facto the craft-guild became to a considerable extent hereditary, guilds in general differed from the caste, which in India functioned partly as a craft group (Lambert 1891, 15-16), on account of the voluntary nature of the bond, which rested not on hereditary status but on the mutual oath, on artificial rather than blood fraternity. The early social guild formed one basis for the later craft-guild, an evolution which may (using Durkheim’s language) be described as the development of ‘segments’ into ‘organs’ of society: that is, groups originally general and identical in function gradually assumed specialized and differentiated roles in particular branches of economic life. They were indeed the cells of a new kind of society. Although social groups of this kind have probably had a wider variety of functions, greater diffusion, and a more continuous and varied history in medieval and modern Europe than elsewhere, they are by no means peculiar to Germanic culture. In several tribal societies, young men form distinct groups. Male drinking clubs played an important role in ancient Greece. The Roman collegia (also called corpora, sodalitia), which included social clubs, burial societies and cubic groups, went back ‘earlier than recorded history’, being mentioned in the Twelve Tables as an imitation of a Greek model (Duff 1938, 103). All such groups were artificial families which differentiated themselves, like the natural family, from the outside world. They have their own special ethos. Sometimes they have played a part in 3

GUILDS AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL THOUGHT

specifying the moral obligations of their members and even like peer groups in forming their members' moral consciousness. The modern world too is’shot through with such groups. The typical modern private association is more specialized and less tightly-knit, without the same serious and permanent obligations of ‘brotherhood’ and friendship. Regiments, schools and a variety of ‘old-boy networks’ bind people together as select groups with a common interest and ethos. Such groups operate, for goid or ill, as a counterbalance to the modern state with its legal impartiality and meritocratic criteria. The phenomenon of Pecr jr““Pj’ gangs even suggests a general human tendency to form groups of th s kind. 8 The development of political clubs in the late Roman Republic led to a general suppression of colleges under the consulate of Cicero, and again by Caesar. Augustus stabilized their position as friendly societies for religiou purposes, burial and other forms of mutual aid; a distinction now emerge between ‘licit’ and ‘illicit’ colleges (Duff 1938, 107-8). To tins dates back the juristic and political tradition according to which such guilds are sublet to the common law and to government, require a special licence and may be dissolved by the state, and should be excluded from politics (Duff 1938, 1 During the Germanic settlement of northern and western Europe, from the fifth to the tenth centuries, the guilds played an especially important ro e as a form of social organization not dependent on blood ties but sacred in character, providing security as ‘artificial families’ (Le Bras 1940-1, 362 3, Michaud-Quantin 1970, 180). Known as gildonia, confratnae or convivia, they were at first most common in lower Germania, Frisia and the ow Countries (Coornaert 1947, 28). They were mutual support groups an alternative to feudal relations in an age of acute instability when something more than family bonds was required. If their primary religious function was service of the dead, their primary moral ethos was summed up in t e oath enjoining ‘an obligation of mutual aid’ (Bloch 1961, 420). Their members were not necessarily of equal social status, and they might mclu e women (Coornaert 1947, 37; Wilda 1831, 33-4); but within the group the oath was taken not to a single leader or lord but to each other. Their functions were now extended to all kinds of mutual protection: buna funds, support for poor members or dependents of deceased members, an insurance service in case of fire or shipwreck (Coornaert 1947, 37-40; Michaud-Quantin 1970,182-5; Wilda 1831,119ff., 125ff). Their ties were expressed as ‘brotherhood’ and ‘friendship’: guilds were confratnae, their members confratres, forming an amicitia (Coornaert 1947, 34; Wilda 183 , 124). These ties extended to mutual needs arising from social as well as natural causes: guildsmen must support one another in their quarrels and vendettas, and protect each other from outsiders, even if they have committed a crime (Wilda 1831,124-9, 138). ‘For friendship as well as for 4

THE GUILD: HISTORY

vengeance we shall remain united, come what may’, said the London guild ordinances of the tenth century (Bloch 1961, 420). Guilds settled disputes among their own members, exercising over them a kind of jurisdiction (Coornaert 1947, 34; Wilda 1831, 136-7). The ties contracted in the guild acquired a sacred character from the mutual oath; it was a clearly-defined relationship with specific rights and duties. These social guilds provoked the opposition of lords and bishops, of the Lombard kings and Carolingian emperors: they were accused of orgiastic rites, drunkenness and lasciviousness. Their rites were suspect to the church, their secrecy to lay rulers too. They made claims, quasi-legal in character, which were bound to stand in the way of feudal lordship and any would-be state. The mutual oath made them appear dangerous; as Cicero and Caesar had banned the Roman collegia as politically subversive, so medieval rulers from time to time charged guilds with the crime of sworn conspiracy (■coniuratio) (Michaud-Quantin 1970, 229-30; Wilda 1831, 39-40). As time went on the term coniuratio, an accurate enough description of the guilds, became less pejorative in some contexts, being applied without disfavour to some early urban communes. During the Dark Ages guilds were gradually Christianized. This obviously affected their religious character; yet in this and other matters their functions were transformed rather than radically altered. Prayers were offered for the departed; guilds adopted patron saints. Since so little is known about the moral language of the pre-Christian guilds, it is difficult to know whether what now emerged as the central guild values - brotherhood, friendship, mutual aid — derived from Christian or Germanic origin. Whatever was the case, these were from now on the essential components of guild moral sentiment. On the other hand, the private execution of justice was forbidden by higher authority and on the whole dwindled in import¬ ance. Many guilds called themselves ‘confraternities’, as did other groups formed under ecclesiastical influence for pious and charitable purposes, which also had a guild-like organization. Some of these performed charitable work in local society outside their own ranks; some extended to the whole local population (Duparc 1975). Since, on the one hand, such ‘grass-roots’ organizations of clergy and laymen - in some ways akin to South American ‘basic ecclesial communities’ today — had previously been frowned upon by the church, and, on the other hand, Germanic guilds had previously confined mutual aid to small groups, this may be seen as a fusion of the Christian ideals of the universal brotherhood of believers and of charity to all men, with the Germanic institution of the guild; or, as an expression of the one through the other (cf. Le Bras 1940—1, esp. 324; Michaud-Quantin 1970, 129ff.). Throughout the Middle Ages, and often beyond, many villages contained one or more such confraternities, some5

GUILDS AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL THOUGHT

times embracing the whole parish community; their basic principle, says Le times emorac g r tian TV,is was a territonalization

poor (Duparc 1975; Heers 1973, 322 , ) /Heprs 1973 diversity of social ranks and a high propomon of women (Heers, '“he other new development a, the end of the Dark Ages euild organization by merchants. As Coornaert points out, the Dark Age guild was peculiarly suited to the needs of merchants: mutual aid and fnsurance against natural or human hazards provided the social instrument by which both long-distance merchants and the local trading community could operate in a period of instability (1947, 45, 50-3). Sometimes however, ‘merchant guild’ referred simply to the trading element in a local community, particularly in a fiscal context; not all members were necessTedfevalEuropean craft-guilds appeared around 1100 in Ita y the Rhineland and the Low Countries, and they proceeded to spread very quickly over western Europe. It has been suggested that their forma appearance was a rationalization of an already existing practice (Mickwitz 1936, 233; cf. Coornaert 1947, 209). The origin of their existence and of their organization has been disputed and remains obscure (Thrupp 1963 233) Were they a continuation, or perhaps revival, of the craft colleges the Roman Empire, or were they a specialization of the Germanic social guild? Mickwitz argues the former as most probable for Italy, and suggess that the practice may even have been borrowed from Constantinople (1936 166-235). In any case, the degree of continuity is unclear; the Lombard kingdom set up a coiners’ guild in the seventh century (to control the money supply5). Coornaert stresses continuity with the Germanic social guilds i view of shared features: the mutual oath, insurance against sickness, poverty and death, ceremonial drinking and communal feasting. This seems highly probable for northern Europe, where many craft-guilds calle themselves ‘fraternities’ from the start; indeed, a similar evolution may we have taken place in the early Roman Republic. In the later twelfth an thirteenth centuries some craft-guilds arose as splinter groups of sma retailer-craftsmen out of the all-embracing merchant guild dominated now by big merchants (Marlines 1980, 47). On the other hand, the term gild was less often used of crafts, which in official documents tended to be called arte metier, Zunft. Craft-guilds seem to have spoken less often of mutual aid’ than either social guilds or territorial fraternities and communes. Another possibility, particularly in view of the widespread appearance of 6

THE GUILD: HISTORY

craft-guilds in other artisan cultures, is that this was a more or less natural and spontaneous response to the needs of manual workers, or a social expression of handicraft production itself (as Unwin (1904) suggests: cf. Martines 1980, 47). But the form of organization (see pp.23-4), and much of the ethos, appear to have been carried over from the social guilds which were already so widespread in northern Europe. This could be described as a process of secularization (see pp. 63—4). That a living tradition of cultic association was at hand may help explain the relatively sudden diffusion of craft-guilds in the twelfth century, and their peculiar prominence in European culture; that it was being secularized may explain the steady adoption of more practical, less affective language. Analogous institutions certainly existed among merchants and craftsmen in other parts of the world, for example in China, Japan, India, and in medieval and modern Islam (Klein 1967, 164-8; Weber 1958, 83-4, 878). Hobsbawm suggests that artisan guilds are ‘a type of organization which appears to be quite universal wherever and whenever there are pre¬ industrial cities (1971, 108, 111). In ancient Rome, numerous trades had their own colleges, but from Augustus onwards these functioned only in specified trades under state licence (Duff 1938, 109ff., 126, 148, 150-1). The European crafts seem, in general, to be characterized by a greater degree of independence, at least in the Middle Ages; they functioned in every artisan calling, and, like the European economy itself, underwent a process of continuous development. There may even, as we shall see, be some continuity with the modern labour union under industrial capitalism, which may be seen as a response to needs in some ways analogous to those experienced in the early Middle Ages. Likewise, some trade unions evolved out of friendly societies and manifested the same qualities of brotherhood and mutual support, in short moral ties (see pp. 175-6). There are further similarities with the evolution of the medieval crafts both in cases where trade unions have in their turn become powerful and monopolistic, and in cases where they have become integrated into the governmental process in a system which has been called ‘liberal corporatism’. Were craft-guilds set up by the authorities (lord or town council) or on the initiative of their own members? Again, there would appear to be considerable variety over Europe: there are cases of crafts agitating for corporate recognition and also of towns determining the number of permitted craft associations, usually in collusion with the larger merchants and the more powerful crafts themselves. In the craft-guild, the ‘mystery’ of craftsmanship is joined with the dynamic of the pressure group; skill and endurance, on which life and progress depend, are powered by a specific social bond. Craft-guilds varied enormously, not only in the trades or crafts pursued, but in size, social status and the wealth of their members. Although in many cases they 7

GUILDS AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL THOUGHT developed out of groups of a social and religious chjwcw, they were primarily characterized by a concern for economic and above a 1 arm manufacturing interests and policies. They were formed specifically to oversee and to regulate the activities of all practitioners of a given craft the region controlled by the town. While recent scholarship has tended to play down their social and religious affiliations, it seems clear-thatjdieym fact combined juridical, political, religious and social aspirationsbutHh the economic motive of establishing corporate monopoly was primary, it was this which specifically brought together all those engaged in a single craft (Mickwitz 1936,156-62). The economic policy of the merchant gui and early towns was aimed at maximizing the volume of trade and the consequent benefits to the town and its own merchants: all goods passing nearby must go through the town, tolls must be paid a certain a™ount ° handling must fall to local men, and so on. The craft-guilds on the other hand were concerned with maintaining a steady volume of business for their members. Their chief aims were a satisfactory ship and a fair price for its products (Rong 1967, 150-1; Thrupp 1963, 254) and the restriction of ‘the number of apprentices a master might keep, the hours he might work and the tools he could use’ (Hibbert 1963, 214). There was thus^ mixture of public spirit and self-interest in craR-gud policies.

These were particularly entangled over prices. ^ Guilds

were

‘concerned that a good product should be sold at a fair price (Rorig 151) but the line between protecting producers and exploiting consumers was obviously fine. Coornaert sees a transition from social to economic priorities, and a move away from social solidarity to mere collective se interest t^ithtn the group, around the end of the thtrteenth century Tht would approximately coincide with the saturation point reached by the medieval economy. About the same time Hibbert (1963) sees a change from liberal policies to protectionism and over-regulation in the towns themselves. j One of the chief attractions of the medieval crafts for some modern observers was their attempt to safeguard the small independent producer. On the other hand, there were, then as now, allegations of price-fixing by a restricted group, of ‘monopoly’. Recent scholarship, at least on the later Middle Ages, has emphasized the self-interested nature of the guild, vis-a-vts both customers and workers lower down the scale. ‘The guilds, once seen as associations of equals embodying the principles of urban freedom, are now usually regarded as privileged corporations of promoters of monopoly (Brady 1978a

15). Heers believes that later-medieval crafts consistently

raised prices and kept them high (1973, 225-6). Doubtless it depends where one looks, and above all whether one is speaking of the earlier or later Middle Ages. Thrupp, for example, maintains that ‘direct evidence of price policies in a local industry, or of their success, is rare’ and that evidence that

THE GUILD: HISTORY points to restrictive policies ... is seldom conclusive’ (1963, 263). Similarly, the supervision of training through the apprentice system both maintained standards (the secret economies or improvements effected by individuals would if possible be passed on and would become guild property’ (Thrupp 1963, 274)), and provided cheap labour, as guilds sought to keep down the wages of unskilled labourers, usually employed in small numbers (Heers 1973, 275; Thrupp 1963, 257, 264). It was partly to co-ordinate policy on apprenticeship and wages that craft-guilds of the same trade in different cities sometimes entered into agreements with each other (Gierke 1868, 383; Klein 1967, 185; Rorig 1967, 160; Thrupp 1963, 257). On the other hand, masons involved in building major churches — the creme de la creme of craft-guildsmen — met from time to time on a more or less international basis to discuss all kinds of craft questions, and a central European meeting at Regensburg in 1459, which included journeymen as well as masters, stipulated that no one should be taught for money (Harvey 1950, 21). Craft-guilds aimed typically to secure continuity of work and income for their members, a burgher livelihood’ (Rorig 1967, 151), and to maintain the fixed number of small independent producing masters in each craft. To this end they sought to limit competition. While most guilds ‘took for granted a certain spread in the scale of operations’, so that masters might employ at least five times the amount of workshop help’, the general aim was to prevent the expansion of one man’s business at the expense of others. It was here that the idea of equality came into play. Thrupp points out that this ‘referred to independence, not to absolute equality of income’, and that they far preferred independence in a small slow-moving business to the prospect of working under the direction of great merchant entrepreneurs in a thriving export trade’. They pursued ‘extreme caution’ rather than profit (Thrupp 1963, 272-5, 279). Thus the typical craft-guild was pitted against, on one side, unskilled labourers and would-be newcomers to the trade, and, on the other, the large-scale enterprise of capitalistic entrepreneurs and the putting-out system (Weber 1958, 187). Workers lower down the economic and social scale formed their own organizations, from the early fourteenth century onwards, in opposition to the artisan elites. These were similar to craft-guilds in aim and structure, but; were usually denied formal recognition as workers’ associations, though they often maintained corporate status as religious confraternities. Some¬ times there was division within the craft itself between masters and others, especially day-labourers (journeymen), who were known as the yeomanry,

compagnons, Geselle. In other cases, the restricted entry to the craft, often confined to masters’ sons, gave rise to ‘a class of unqualified workers not admitted to the full rights of the guild’ as well as of ordinary manual labourers (Heers 1973, 397; Unwin 1904, 10). As Martines puts it, ‘the dividing line cut between those who employed labour and those who hired 9

GUILDS AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL THOUGHT themselves out; those who had tools, working premises ... and those who had little other than their labour’ (1980, 186). Such groups were the driving force behind urban revolts in Italy during the later fourteenth century demanding, as the crafts had earlier, less tax, a fairer